The Business of Poverty: Obscene Salaries Dominate at Int’l Development Banks
Congress has been passive. Although the U.S. executive directors to the Bank and the IMF are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the Senate has not insisted on bringing salaries in line with U.S. norms.
U.S. Senator Mike Johanns (R-NB), the ranking Republican member on a Senate subcommittee overseeing international finance, said U.S. policymakers should at the very least review U.S. contributions to the IMF in light of the allegations surrounding Dominque Strauss-Kahn.
A 1977 U.S. law does mandate that the president “take all appropriate actions to keep the compensation for IMF employees at a level comparable to the compensation of both private business and the U.S. government in comparable positions.” The law has never been enforced.
Complaints about lavish payrolls have been present for a long time. In 1990 when Martin Irwin resigned as a vice president from the World Bank, he wrote a scathing paper titled “Banking on Poverty.” Prominent among the deficiencies he identified was that Bank employees were fixated on personal salaries, perks, and benefits, and little on the fate of the poverty-stricken:
The institution is plagued by massive overstaffing, bureaucratic gridlock, and staff preoccupation with further salary and benefit hikes. Public proclamations to the contrary, poverty reduction is the last thing on most World Bank bureaucrats’ minds.
1995 was the last year the GAO examined the IMF compensation structure. They concluded:
They exceed the pay rates in the public sector in all surveyed markets, as well as in the United Nations.
Last year, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee slammed all of the development banks, describing them as “international bureaucracies answerable to no one government or constituency.”
In 2007, blogger Sameer Dossani reminisced about growing up in a World Bank household — both parents worked for the World Bank:
As a child I heard snippets of conversation about West African travels and poverty around the world. I also picked up talk of “golden handshakes” and benefits such as my own private school education being subsidized by the Bank.
Noted Sen. Johanns:
All of this controversy, it makes you wonder if they are minding the store over there.
I only have one thing to say-it figures!
Well Well Well. Of course this excessive salary masks the real issue which is that these drones do no useful work. In the private sector the stockholder and through their directors take risks with their capital. This includes paying their people for performance-sometimes at levels that the common man might deem excessive. The difference is that this is private risk capital that is owned by private individuals. These drones at the IMF most likely do more damage than good in most of their meddlesome activities. I challenge any citizen in the USA to even know what the hell the IMF is supposed to do or the World Bank and how about the OECD? And what about the illustrious sacred cow hiding in the shadows right now and hoping against hope that their name does not come up in these discussions. Yes the good old United Nations. If you want to see what a real loser organization looks like well this is the one that takes the cake. These turkeys go one step further with their job description which basically means they get paid like kings, have diplomatic immunity, don’t do a damm thing, live in NYC on big expense accounts, and then BITE the hand that feeds them by bashing America and Israel on a daily basis. Their Human Rights sub group is composed of mostly dictatorships with a history of human rights abuses.
Now that we are in serious budget mode and after we get rid of this community organizer president, perhaps we can turn the conversation on how to kick their collective asses by cutting their budgets by about 90%.
I agree, but you’re more correct in suggesting that the transnational technocrats “do more damage than good in most of their meddlesome activities” than that they “do no useful work.” The useful work is outweighed by the counterproductive work and/or unintended consequences.
Moreover, the “blame” for these seven-decades-old failing projects should be widely spread around. For example, in the past many “conservatives” argued that the only way to attract the most talented bankers, economists, etc. to these types of positions was to pay market-rate compensation and perks. In turn, it was expected that these economic and financial experts would apply their sophisticated understandings of economics and market dynamics to international development, finance, governance, etc. Well, institutions like the IMF probably helped to promote international trade and appreciation for markets, but in the process they also (mostly inadvertantly) promoted transnational currents that are not all friendly and/or conducive to classical liberalism and free market socities.
It’s taken us awhile to figure out that applying market-like aspects to government/technocracy just doesn’t work very well, for government or for markets. Many of the highly-compensated transnational technocrats were very smart, well-intended people, but they were being asked to do things that were beyond human comprehension.
The short answer is less government/technocracy, more markets, but in the past we’ve partly articulated that vision by suggesting that we can “fix” public problems by running government and policy agencies “like a business,” and by applying market principles to social and economic policy planning. Great idea, too bad it doesn’t work in reality.
We need to simplify: we must move toward letting (much smaller) NATIONAL and sub-national(not transnational) governments be governments and markets be markets.
I agree, but you’re more correct in suggesting that transnational technocrats “do more damage than good in most of their meddlesome activities” than that they “do no useful work.” The useful work is outweighed by the counterproductive work and/or unintended consequences.
Moreover, the “blame” for these seven-decades-old failing projects should be widely spread around. For example, in the past many “conservatives” argued that the only way to attract the most talented bankers, economists, etc. to these types of positions was to pay market-rate compensation and perks. In turn, it was expected that these economic and financial experts would apply their sophisticated understandings of economics and market dynamics to international development, finance, governance, etc. Well, institutions like the IMF probably helped to promote international trade and appreciation for markets, but in the process they also (mostly inadvertantly) promoted transnational currents that are not all friendly and/or conducive to classical liberalism and free market socities.
It’s taken us awhile to figure out that applying market-like aspects to government/technocracy just doesn’t work very well, for government or for markets. Many of the highly-compensated transnational technocrats were very smart, well-intended people, but they were being asked to do things that were beyond human comprehension.
The short answer is less government/technocracy, more markets, but in the past we’ve partly articulated that vision by suggesting that we can “fix” public problems by running government and policy agencies “like a business,” and by applying market principles to social and economic policy planning. Great idea, too bad it doesn’t work in reality.
We need to simplify: we must move toward letting (much smaller) NATIONAL and sub-national(not transnational) governments be governments and markets be markets.
Count POTUS candidates that even question the undeniable corruption in banking and other parasitic institutions on any level. Following the money trail and relocation of those at the top of their parasitic food chains will reveal their obscene greed exceeding even collective audacity portrayed by majority party action in promoting any stimulus package with private oversight providing only token cosmetic justice.. Then follow the trail of your canceled check to the IRS to map the route and simplicity of IMF collection agency’s collusion with Federal Reserve banking and US treasury.
Bailing without first plugging the leak has always been a futile action.
Perhaps budget reduction following multiple agency amputation will slow the tide but consider the owners of the oceans and their many tides. They meet in secrecy often enough to counter all resistance simply by using geographical diversity and shifting management to yet another of their many concentric circles of command all of which remain shrouded from uninformed voters.
The IMF and World Bank, are just two more international institutions that need to go away, just like the United Nations. They are progressive wet dreams come true and cost the American tax payer way, way more than they are worth. What is really sad is that most Americans don’t realize that we contribute most of the money to these institutions, or at least a large part of it. So when a country like Greece gets a bailout from the IMF or the World Bank, they’re really getting most of that money from us, the United States. Not only have we become the world’s policeman, we’ve also become the world’s banker, and to countries that are the worse risk imaginable. If you Europeans love these progressive ideas so much, then you can fund them on your own. Oh, I’m sorry, countries like Greece can’t do that. Why? Because they’re BANKRUPT! Let them fend for themselves. It’s about time we focus on putting our own financial house in order.
“That’s the way you do it, money for nothing and chicks for free.” – Well, until you get too greedy.
The major world charities have some catching up to do. Their bosses don’t get too much above the $100,000 to $150,000 mark.
You totally nailed it, John. I’m gonna put that quote on my FaceBook link to this article.
Ever wonder how the US went nearly fifteen TRILLION upside down? Or that it’s robbed its own trusts for over ONE HUNDRED trillion more?
We need to stop seeing these sums and others as the work of pilfering taxpayer pockets. These sums come from the inherent action of fiat currency in a fractional reserve lending system. Money is manufactured debt — literally, printed, fabricated, interest-bearing entities in computers that are generated and paid countless times every day.
If you remember nothing from this topic, remember that every dollar is a unit of debt. Each and every one were lent into existence.
These vast, literally unpayable sums are the mathematical action of interest in a closed, one-currency system operated by unelected elites.
What’s the single greatest threat to the American constitutional Republic? It’s the approaching single global currency that these progressive monetary systems will bring about when they fail, and they will fail. Think these international banks will “go away” because we say they need to? Not going to happen.
A hundred years ago our grandparents wrote the eventual end of American sovereignty when they allowed Wilson’s Federal Reserve Act. The single greatest risk is this system of wealth redistribution and massive power, and the single greatest failing in politically conservative circles is not recognizing this simple fact.
“To enable you to maintain … a scale of living appropriate to your position.”
Yes, it’s true…Socialists secretly yearn to be nobility.
It is comforting to see others revolted by the Noblis Oblige that infects too many of our servant class. Their sense of responsibility to and for the peasants soon erodes as they over state their importance. Today as ever the workers carry the Ruling Class. I for one, have had enough.
It is estimated that, in the last half century, some 90% of the money taken from the US taxpayer and given to various African needs, was diverted to wealthy people’s bank accounts. We know, in the last few years, that the primary result of spending our grand childrens’ life time earnings, has been to make wealthy bankers whole. Without that money, they would be paupers.
All of this is known, in detail, in the closed rooms of Congress, where money decisions are made. It is not just condoned; it is purposeful. Retirees get golden parachutes, after golden handshakes, after enjoying young women’s bodies, just little people.
One of the few concepts of my President that I fully endorse was his statement to key bankers, at the White House, prior to giving them oceans of money, “I am the only thing between you and the pitch forks.”
He may not be enough. I pray that America’s economic problems are solved peacefully.
People scream about the “obscene” salaries of business CEOs — who are NOT letting people starve to death or die of preventable diseases in order to keep their cushy lifestyles. Corporations make good things available: cars, gasoline, computers, clothing. These poverty pimps have to manufacture more poverty in order to justify their own existence.
They are the lowest form of life — even below child molesters. Child molesters aren’t paid to do the evil they do, and they at least let their victims live.
If I am not mistaken, another “benefit,” at least for the IMF, is that employees income taxes in their home country are paid by the IMF. Thus, U.S. citizens in the know in Washington, D.C. are always on the lookout for these cushy World Bank and IMF jobs, which not only pay extremely well and have lavish benefits, but also immediately render newly hired “international civil servants” income tax free.
Big part of my life have come in the country of class justice and moral.
Every accused was regarded accordingly his class origin and ideology which can be evaluated as the axtenuating or aggravating circumstances.I have hoped never to meet the similar situation
Most debates about goverment overspending end up focusing on programs and departments. I always go back to the people. The U.S. employees almost 2 MILLION Federal Civil Servants and another 600k in the Post Office.
There is your over-spending, your high taxes, your debt, your over-regulation and loss of freedom, and our future bankruptcy. Until we fire many (most would be ideal) of these people, our government will be out of control.
My favorite: Phil Angelides Chairing the Commission he should be the target of:
http://wwwtwosetsofbooks.blogspot.com/2011/03/angelides-on-book-tour-to-promote.html
Meet Dominique Strauss-Kahn: Pubic Face of the “International Community’s” organized-criminal looting and squandering of the wealth of America’s — and, therefore, of the world’s most innovative, creative, industrious and productive Men!
Our rulers must be provided with a lifestyle that frees them from personal want, so they can make worry-free decisions about how high our taxes can be before we decide to cut their heads off.
No surprises here! Funny but you never here the Left bitching and whining about the “greed” of these guys or the fact that their lavish lifestyles are funded 100% by the public. Well when you are a part of the “transnational elite” why should you be required to pick up a check? Paying your bills is for little people.
GREAT POST!!!! It’s about time the mainstream catches up with the alternative media in their reporting on these crooks. The USA gives these people the most money out of any other nation in the world, and we get nothing in return.
PJ will officially become radical when they start posting stories on the Bilderbergs,the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission…. looking forward to some great reporting.
“U.S. Senator Mike Johanns (R-NB), the ranking Republican member on a Senate subcommittee overseeing international finance…”
Which state is NB?
I imagine Nebraska, though you’re right: the abbreviation is NE, I think…
Madame Defarge is your knitting complete? We need you.
Oh don’t make me laugh! People at the IMF and World Bank are generally Ph.D economists and financial specialists who could readily get jobs on Wall Street at multiples of their current salaries. That is the right comparison. And by the way, what great benefits has Wall Street given us with all THEIR obscenely larger salaries, bonuses and stock options? Just the greatest binge of speculation and wealth destruction in 80 years! And now the rogues are back to their old tricks – protected by their hired help in both the democrat and republican parties – cooking up the next financial bubble and crash. The IMF and World Bank are not even in the same league as that black hole of economic dysfunction!
I like the reference to madame Defarge. Over the past two years I’ve altered some of my thinking about the French Revolution. I now think that the causes of it are very similar to the revolution-in-the-making that we have here. A tremendous amount of government spending that favors the upkeep of elites that are kept from suffering the consequences of their own irresponsibility, a declining currency value, a tightly regulated job and agricultural market, all run by unaccountable bureaucrats with golden-parachute pensions paid for by people who are forced by the situation to make less than the people they employ in the public sector. A recipe for a guillotine.
Well it isn’t as if we didn’t already know that we needed to abolish the IMF and the World Bank.
When the CEO of chase gets 12 million a year plus 100 million in stock how is that even close to 500k. Additionally, I am sure his golden parachute is over 10 million. The salary the people at the IMF are not taking are in the millions. As we are putting money into the IMF we might as well have competent people there, and be semi competitive.
The difference is that you have a choice whether you wish to contribute to the individual’s salary, where here you don’t. If you don’t like the salary of Chase’s CEO, bank somewhere else; if you don’t like any of their salaries, bank with a neighborhood bank, or don’t have a bank account at all. It’s difficult, but possible, if it offends you that badly.
What upsets everyone here is the number of people involved (10,000!) and the amount of money they make, rearranging everyone else’s life. If it doesn’t make sense to you why a middle-class person, here in the states, who makes a fraction of this, would be upset that his taxes are going to subsidize some guy who pulls down a salary like this, and *doesn’t pay taxes either* then you’re either very wealthy yourself, or not paying attention. Why, when there’s talk of taxing the rich, are these guys immune from the discussion?
Do you mean Chase corporation the electronics manufacturer?
They made $12 billion in profits last year for shareholders.
The Chairman, Peter Chase owns 10% of the corporation. Don’t like family run businesses? don’t buy the stock.
Or do you mean JPChase?
The made $17 billion in profit. Because the stock price went up – CEO James Dimon’s exercised $22.9 million in stock options.
How much value did the IMF return to its primary investor – the U.S. taxpayer?
I used to be outraged by this stuff, but it seems like it’s a different set of clowns each day getting rich off government corruption. Now I’m just resigned, and wondering how I can get in on it.
You’d think these guys worked for the city of Bell, California, or maybe were lifeguards in Newport Beach. Seriously, this is getting silly. Every week it seems like there’s a new scandal involving some bunch of useless bureaucrats or civil “servants” who’ve figured out how to enrich themselves in an incredibly greedy fashion, at public expense. At this point I’m merely weary.
What ignorance. Nobody here gets it at all, not even the author. These institutions ARE MAKING MONEY. They are LENDING BILLIONS, so their operating budgets (INCLUDING SALARIES) come from the INTEREST PROFIT. The US government contributions ARE NOT subsidizing salaries! They are subsidizing the interest-free or low interest credits to the developing countries.
Black Reparations and Other Insanities
In an ideal world, all people would have sufficient food to eat, a good roof over their heads, and a decent life.
They would enjoy freedom from want and from fear, freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship or not worship as they pleased, essentially FDR’s “Four Freedoms” as delineated in January, 1941 toward the end of the Great Depresssion and eleven months before Pearl Harbor, both of which changed everything.
Today, 70 years later, those freedoms are largely commonplace, taken for granted in America and largely elusive in much of the world for various reasons, yet Americans, to their credit for the most part, still strive for more, for perfection. At the same time, some Americans and international institutions of which we are a part are attempting to reverse our good fortune achieved through hard work, diligence, and dedication.
In a perfect American world, we would enjoy all the benefits of the Four Freedoms, with enhancements: All politicians would be honest and trustworthy, we would have a standing rib roast in every oven instead of just a chicken in every pot, we would have a new Lexus or two in every garage in lieu of a 2004 Taurus and an even more ancient Civic, we would win the Lotto at least once in our lives, and we would eat all the cheeseburgers we wish and never get fat.
In President Barack Hussein Obama’s ultra-civil, post-racial brave new world, Lady O. has proclaimed Bill Clinton’s fav food of old, cheeseburgers, definitely out and the chances of those other items on Americans’ wish list being fulfilled are as likely as, well, an ultra-civil, post-racial brave new world. Our president’s favorite international institution, the United Nations, is well on its merry way of insuring those non-eventualities.
With undoubted enthusiastic support from Black America’s Man on the Scene, Michigan’s Democrat House representative for life, Rep. John Conyers, who has virtually dedicated his life to the cause of black reparations, the U.N. is in process of declaring open season on the world’s white inhabitants who just happen to be a minority in the hallowed halls on New York City’s East River.
Undeterred by his wife Monica’s bribery conviction two years ago or his own ethics charges, Conyers is waiting in the wings to again visit his raison d’être on white Americans for their vile crime of imposing slavery on “his” people. Never mind that any slavemaster is long dead as are any former slaves and that America fought a bloody, four-year war to free “his” people, Conyers still wants reparations.
The whole idea, which Conyers has advocated for more than 40 years and which he hopes can be accomplished “without allowing the issue to polarize our party or our nation,” fits in neatly with President Obama’s stated dream of “sharing the wealth.” Why would either Conyers or Obama even imagine that picking the pockets of white Americans to line the pockets of black Americans cause any polarization? . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4668)
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